Inverness club crowned league champions by forfeit

Northern Counties Cricket Club are the North of Scotland champions for 2024 after their scheduled opponents Nairn County forfeited this weekend’ match.

It is the 10th time a Senior League match has been forfeited this season, with just four of the 14 weekends of the campaign so far – including this coming weekend – seeing a full complement of matches being played.

Forres St Lawrence and Nairn County have been the most badly affected by availability issues, but North of Scotland Cricket Association president Chris Blake does not feel the need to panic as he believes they are close to turning that around.

“I get the feeling they are only two or three players away from having a competitive 11 – I don’t see either of them going out of business or anything like that,” he said.

“Forres lost Pal Dhami, who was a big part of the club for years and the best batter in the league, to a team in Aberdeen and a couple of teams went with him.

“Nairn is still a well-run club, a friendly club, but they are struggling to find those extra two or three players to make up their 11 on a Saturday.

“It’s really disappointing to see a title decided on a forfeit, but if teams don’t have an 11 they just don’t have it.

“Typically what you would do is call on guys from your development side to make up the numbers, but maybe the concern was that they wouldn’t be able to do that against a team like Northern Counties who are typically very strong.”

It was only a couple of years ago that the Senior League was reduced to just five teams, although Highland and Fort Augustus have bolstered the ranks since then.

Still, once upon a time there were also sides based out of Lossiemouth, Kinloss and Keith, so it could be seen as a worrying sign for the future of the sport if matches are not being completed with seven teams in the division.

Blake, though, is remaining fairly relaxed about cricket’s prospects across the north of Scotland, saying the sport has been through such challenges before and there are steps the governing body can take to try and improve the situation.

“I think a couple of clubs need to rebuild and look at their progression of juniors, and their recruitment,” he reasoned.

“Clubs need to be proactive. It’s all very well waiting for players to arrive and knock on your door, but steps can be taken to go out and find players.

“This has been a problem for Nosca on and off since the league was formed 100 years ago.

“If you look back through the history books, there have been some very one-sided matches where a team has played with nine or 10 men, so it’s not new, but it’s disappointing all the same.

“I would describe it as a consolidation of cricket in recent years. Having said that, there are clubs that are doing very well – Northern Counties, Ross County, Elgin, Fochabers are on a resurgence too on a Sunday – it’s just maybe isolated in pockets here and there.

“We have tools at our disposal that could make things easier for clubs.

“We could look into relaxing registrations for players under 21, so they cans swap between different clubs – and maybe play for one club on a Saturday and another club on a Sunday.

“What we need to do is sit down at the end of the season and find out where things went wrong, and what we can do to help.

“Nosca runs as an association of clubs – it’s run by the clubs for the clubs – and if we can help in any way we will do that.”

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